Charita Goshay: Pride contagious for high schoolers

Funny thing about being picked on: Sooner or later, if you’re not careful, you can start to believe the terrible things being said about you.

Charita Goshay

Funny thing about being picked on: Sooner or later, if you’re not careful, you can start to believe the terrible things being said about you.

For years, Timken High School has borne a chip on its shoulder the size of a dinner plate. Because high school sports have long been the measuring stick of success in this community -- however unfairly -- Timken has been tagged as a dumping ground for the less talented.

It’s only natural that such derision might poison and distort how Timken kids see themselves, to the point where some chose Timken as a thumb in the eye of convention, a symbolic rejection of what they see as this community’s rah-rah obsession with scholastic sports.

Circling the wagons

When you’re a teenager, so much of your identity is wrapped up in where you attend school. Over the years, Timken students have been made to feel defensive, even ashamed. The tipping point of their humiliation came in 2005, when it was learned that 65 of the school’s 490 girls were pregnant.

Media outlets from around the globe pounced, blissfully ignoring teen-pregnancy statistics in their own communities.

Understandably, Timkenites circled the wagons against the bludgeoning they knew was about to come.

And it did. The school became not only a punching bag for everything wrong about public education and teenagers, but also a punch line for comedians around the country.

Funny how winning changes everything.

Everything counts

This year, the Timken boys basketball team is having the kind of dream season from which Disney movies are made.

Even for those students who couldn’t care less about sports, the team’s success has fostered pride, and pride can be a contagious thing.

For years, head coach Rick Hairston has demonstrated the kind of unwavering commitment that kids need from adults. He deserves this moment.

Some argue that Timken’s current fortune is only the result of McKinley’s misfortune, after several key Bulldogs players transferred.

Maybe. Ask Timkenites if they care.

In the larger scheme of things, some will discount Timken’s miraculous season as insignificant, but when you’ve been on your back long enough, everything counts.